


Connections

by InTheWind



Category: Finding Carter (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-24
Updated: 2015-10-24
Packaged: 2018-04-27 23:37:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 590
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5069269
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InTheWind/pseuds/InTheWind
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Even before he knew she existed, Carter was the only member of the family that Grant felt he could talk to.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Connections

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Mierke](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mierke/gifts).



> This is something a little different than what I'm used to writing, but I had fun with it. I hope you do too!

Grant couldn't remember a time when he didn't feel his sister's presence.

His earliest dreams featured the brown-haired girl who shared his features, always playing just out of reach. Other kids had imaginary friends; Grant had Carter. It all seemed perfectly normal, but what was a phase for most kids turned out to be a fact of life for Grant—a fact that didn't go unnoticed by either his mother, who seemed to watch his every move with worry, or his peers, who mocked him mercilessly at every opportunity. Quickly Grant learned to keep his visions of Carter to himself.

As he got older, Carter became a confidant, someone he could talk to when no one else would listen. He'd lie awake at night and picture Carter doing the same, in a room he'd never been in but which had become intimiately familiar to him somehow. At age 7 when he heard the name Lyndon for the first time during an argument his parents hadn't realized he was present for, he imagined himself telling Carter all about this mysterious sibling he'd never had the chance to know. “Taylor says she had dark hair and brown eyes, just like me,” he said out loud to his empty room. “Kinda like you, too, I guess.” He could picture Carter clearly, restlessly pacing her room, twirling around to music as he spoke. “Anyway,” he continued, “It would have been cool to have another sister.”

At 9, he turned to Carter after learning the truth about his own conception from his father's end of a drunken phone call. “All I wanted was to make her happy,” David was slurring to his publicist. “She thought she was marrying some literary genius, getting the house and the picket fence and the two kids—and then Lyndon disappeared, so we had Grant and he almost died, and damnit Toby I don't think she can take anything else. I need this book deal...”

“Lyndon disappeared so we had Grant,” Grant told Carter that evening, after the phrase had been turning over in his mind all day. “So we had Grant. That's what he said. Like I'm a consolation prize or something. Like, 'Hey, sorry your first kid's probably dead, but don't worry, we'll get you a new one.' All this time I've been wondering what it's like to have another sister. I guess I never would have known, because if she were here I wouldn't be. How am I supposed to deal with that? Should I be happy that she's gone, because it's the only reason I exist?” He paused, wishing he were at the park where Carter seemed to be; he could almost feel the wind on her face as she pumped herself as high as she could go on the swingset. He knew it was just his imagination, but it made his room seem a little brighter nonetheless, a little less stuffy. “You don't have siblings, do you?” he asked her. She didn't respond; she never did, but it didn't phase him. “I guess you should consider yourself lucky.”

One night when he was 12 he had a very different vision of Carter—this time she was alone in a room with concrete walls, scared and trying not to show it. He asked her where she was, what was wrong, but as always she didn't answer. He fell asleep telling her that everything would be okay, silently praying she could hear him.

The next morning, he woke up to the news that Lyndon had been found.


End file.
